or laugh outright;--the whole made up a
picture that even now I have but to close my eyes to see again!

When night falls the streets get for a time more crowded; side-paths
hardly exist--at all events, the inhabitants show their independence by
crowding along the centre of the streets. Not much light to guide them,
though, except where from open doors or windows the rays from lamps shoot
out into the darkness.

Away to the hotel. A dinner in a delightfully cool, large room, a punkah
waving overhead, brilliant lights, joy on all our faces, a dessert fit to
set before a king. Now we shall know how those strange fruits taste, whose
perfume hung around the market to-day. To bed at last in a room scented
with orange-blossoms, and around the windows of which the sweet
stephanotis clusters in beauty--to bed, to sleep, and dream of all we have
done and seen.

We awaken--at least, I do--in the morning with a glad sensation of
anticipated pleasure. What is it? Oh yes, the picnic!

But it is no ordinary picnic. It lasts for three long days and nights,
during which we drive by day through scenes of enchantment apparently, and
sleep by night under canvas, wooed to slumber by the wind whispering in
the waving trees.

'Moncrieff,' I say on the second day, 'I should like to live here for ever
and ever and ever.'

'Man!' replies Moncrieff, 'I'm glad ye enjoy it, and so does my mither
here. But dinna forget, lads, that hard work is all before us when we
reach Buenos Ayres.'

'But I will, and I _shall_ forget, Moncrieff,' I cry. 'This country is
full of forgetfulness. Away with all thoughts of work; let us revel in the
sunshine like the bees, and the birds, and the butterflies.'

'Revel away, then,' says Moncrieff; and dear aunt smiles languidly.

On the last day of 'the show,' as Dugald called it, and while our mule
team is yet five good miles from town, clouds dark and threatening bank
rapidly up in the west. The driver lashes the beasts and encourages them
with shout and cry to do their speedy utmost; but the storm breaks over us
in all its fury, the thunder seems to rend the very mountains, the rain
pours down in white sheets, the lightning runs along the ground and looks
as if it would set the world on fire; the wind goes tearing through the
trees, bending the palms like reeds, rending the broad banana-leaves to
ribbons; branches crack and fall down, and the whole air is filled with
whirling fronds and foliage.

Moncrie